Wednesday, May 4, 2011

According to the Journal Sentinel, the Voter Suppression Bill (AB7) was passed out of committee on a party-line vote. The Republicans are trying to quickly ram this bill through before the recall elections, because the bill reduces the number of voters who can and will vote, particularly those who vote for Democrats and who already lack a voice in our communities. Read this post for more information about why the Voter Suppression Bill proposes a fake solution and is a very expensive distraction (it'll cost yearly more than the current recount) from our real issues.

The Voter Suppression Bill is a fake solution, because the bill (which is meant to prevent voter fraud) won't prevent any of the at most 20 improper votes in recent elections. So it doesn't even do what the Republicans say it will do, and it costs us much more of our time and money. This bill is a fraud.

The bill was amended to allow certain school IDs, but none of the UW schools include the necessary information for them to be used. I'm not sure about the status of IDs from other higher education institutions in Wisconsin, but it's likely the amendment allows the use of very few current student IDs. We will in one way or another pay for those IDs to be updated as well, otherwise it's called a poll tax. The amendment doesn't address those costs. So the amendment is just as careless as the rest of the bill.

By allowing only certain student IDs, the Republicans have shown how arbitrary the photo ID requirement is. People in Wisconsin haven't been voting in place of other people, and honestly it's very difficult to make any sort of impact by travelling around, waiting in line, and hoping to use just the right names. They could strengthen or loosen the requirement, and the only thing it would do is change the number of voters who can and will vote. It's a frivolous requirement.

To have any influence, voter fraud requires a true conspiracy on a level the United States has not seen. However, by manipulating voting machine tallies, one person can swing a statewide election. That doesn't require a conspiracy.

We must stop this horrific bill now or we may never have fair elections in Wisconsin again! The Republicans are planning to turn the bill into law in the next couple of weeks, and they plan to schedule a vote in the full Assembly as early as next week.